One of the next big things in space innovation is a modest cube, about the size of a coffee mug or a shoe box, now being developed to circle Earth and monitor space weather, observe the atmosphere, and test the feasibility of using a sun-powered sail to tow space junk.

Over the past decade, these diminutive cube satellites, or CubeSats,have grown in importance. Some think they are poised to have a potentially profound impact on the big-budget space industry, where missions can routinely cost hundreds of millions, similar to the effect the advent of personal computers had on computing.